Teaming up?

[JaguarX]

Tanking vast amounts of damage in CO means stacking powers and advantages covering vastly different forms of defense to the point of nausea.

I recently ran with a tank who combined (based on observing his running buffs) Invulnerability, Energy Shield with the Laser Knight advantage, Reconstruction Circuits, Support Drones, Protection Field, Field Surge, Aggressor, Conviction, and Palliate.  He was damn-near unkillable, tanking Mega-Destroid Overseers in Resistance on Elite difficulty, two at a time.

Dude had a perpetual damage shield, soaked up fire from everybody and their mother, and whatever got through the shield and actually damaged his health could be easily healed back.  Heck, his support drones spent more time healing me and other party members than healing him.

wow that is good stuff.


I'm planning on running Resistance myself tonight at about 7pm mountain time zone.

[Thunder Glove]

[faith.grins]

Tanking vast amounts of damage in CO means stacking powers and advantages covering vastly different forms of defense to the point of nausea.

I recently ran with a tank who combined (based on observing his running buffs) Invulnerability, Energy Shield with the Laser Knight advantage, Reconstruction Circuits, Support Drones, Protection Field, Field Surge, Aggressor, Conviction, and Palliate.  He was damn-near unkillable, tanking Mega-Destroid Overseers in Resistance on Elite difficulty, two at a time.

Dude had a perpetual damage shield, soaked up fire from everybody and their mother, and whatever got through the shield and actually damaged his health could be easily healed back.  Heck, his support drones spent more time healing me and other party members than healing him.

Yeah, it's great that the "tank" was unkillable because he bought six healing powers.  That still leaves all Archetypal tanks up Crepe Creek, with no explanation as to why.  It still means he was using more healing powers than defensive ones.  It still means that if I want to Stand Tall and Hold Fast as a hero, my means of doing so rely solely on either someone in the back taking most of their time to keep me in the black, or to devote myself to doing that for myself and not contributing to the fight in a direct sense.  There is no Back-Alley-Brawler-esque or Statesman-type character in CO, there are only people who are made of two-ply toilet paper (instead of single-ply) who brought duct tape with them.  It's cool to be able to do that in the context of the game, but it doesn't feel cool the way tanking in City of Heroes did.  Or, for that matter, the way tanking in World of Warcraft does.  (Yeah, that's right, I went there.  My Death Knight could tank heroic spawns with my healer specced Shadow.  I felt like I was doing the bulk of the work, there, and I still got to swing a big damn axe at the enemies.  Where in CO can I do that?)

You guys never played with our tank. His favorite tactic was to run into a large room, run around to each mob to get all of their attention, then bring them all back to us. As long as we kept him healed, buffed, and supplied with any purples that dropped, we could handle any large room, up to and including Frostfire

The heals became less important, though not unnecessary, once Freedom came out and Regen Brutes became available on blueside.

1)  As someone who liked playing Tanks and Doms, I hated people who insisted on herding.  As a tank, I find herding to be a boring job with high risk and no greatly improved yields.  As a Dom I hate herding because it made me less safe, not more.  My Doms drew a lot of hate.  Normal 8-person mobs were small enough that the overflow from the aggro cap could be shut down by my AoE controls.  A large room herded back to the door was so large, I was practically guaranteed to die if I tossed any AoE at all.  Roots was great AoE, but when using it means I instantly hit the aggro cap?  No thanks, I'll stick to Blaze and Strangler, thank you very much.
2)  Regen Brutes are not optimal for herding at all, except in the sense that I mentioned earlier:  they stack with all types of buffs.  I'd be reasonably willing to bet my Dark Armor Tank was tougher with no external support at level 30 than a Regen Brute at level 50, and she had a Taunt aura to boot.  (At level 50, with Incarnate powers?  Forget about it. Dark Regeneration every 10 seconds?  Yes, please.)

[dwturducken]

It wasn't a risk-reward equation, but a matter of efficiency. As long as one of us didn't have something like Rain of Fire, the Tank could hold the aggro. If I was on my dark corruptor, Darkwing Turducken, and Mr. Mustache, our VG's other dark corruptor, was with us, we could keep the tenebrous tentacles on them and counter it, but it burned through the mobs quickly, regardless.

(And, yes, I miss the game.  )

[faith.grins]

Aggro caps existed since i6 at the very latest, since that's when I started playing and I know they were a thing then.  As of I18 I did some stress-testing on a Brute and a Tank of mine, and I know for a fact at that point the aggro cap was somewhere around 18 mobs.  Many mobs were also programmed not to even target you at all if you were already at the aggro cap, even if you attacked them.  Regardless, in the last year the game existed, it was not physically possible for your Tank buddy to herd a large office room of enemies on a team any larger than 4 without grabbing enemies that would aggro to other players, any other players, as soon as they could see them.  As such, it was much more efficient to just set your difficulty to 8-Man and just dive in as you came to the punks rather than sit at a door and wait for someone to come back trailing enemies that traveled different speeds and might or might not attack other people as soon as they showed up.  If you believed otherwise, that was a holdover from when the game functioned differently.  In addition, there is little efficiency to be gained because many AoE powers had a target cap of 10; just slightly more than half the size of the aggro cap.  Those two extra targets probably didn't gain you any time, given that the players could get from spawn to spawn much faster than mobs could, much less the time it took to herd a whole room.

I also direct you to my comment about finding herding to be boring. I'd much rather jump right into the middle and start swinging than play cat-and-mouse and visibility-tag (or just load up on Lucks and run around for 120 seconds.)

TL;DR - Herding was only "more efficient" if your difficulty was set too low.

[corvus1970]

1)  As someone who liked playing Tanks and Doms, I hated people who insisted on herding.  As a tank, I find herding to be a boring job with high risk and no greatly improved yields.  As a Dom I hate herding because it made me less safe, not more.  My Doms drew a lot of hate.  Normal 8-person mobs were small enough that the overflow from the aggro cap could be shut down by my AoE controls.  A large room herded back to the door was so large, I was practically guaranteed to die if I tossed any AoE at all.  Roots was great AoE, but when using it means I instantly hit the aggro cap?  No thanks, I'll stick to Blaze and Strangler, thank you very much.

I saw herding a lot when I would team, but it was definitely much more common before the aggro and AOE caps were put into place. Some tanks were very insistent on it.

As a Tank or Brute it was very rare for me to herd, and typically I only did it if I was the only tank around, and if the team I was on requested it. What I liked doing was simply leaping into the mob with my Taunt-Aura going, and going to town, hitting taunt as needed to keep most of the aggro focused on myself.

I would also adjust my play-style if we had a Dom present that liked to run in and immobilize a mob first, or if there was a Tank present that could better survive an Alpha-strike, and this often happened when I played my Willpower Tank. When I played my Invulnerability Brute, it wasn't really an issue.

However, as stated, my first instinct was to leap in, aggro, and start hitting LTs and Bosses in the face.

2)  Regen Brutes are not optimal for herding at all, except in the sense that I mentioned earlier:  they stack with all types of buffs.  I'd be reasonably willing to bet my Dark Armor Tank was tougher with no external support at level 30 than a Regen Brute at level 50, and she had a Taunt aura to boot.  (At level 50, with Incarnate powers?  Forget about it. Dark Regeneration every 10 seconds?  Yes, please.)

Willpower Tanks had issues holding aggro, because their taunt-auras (Rise to the Challenge, chiefly) were very weak when compared to most other Tanks. I learned that pretty early on, and there were occasions when it was rather frustrating.

[faith.grins]

Willpower Tanks had issues holding aggro, because their taunt-auras (Rise to the Challenge, chiefly) were very weak when compared to most other Tanks. I learned that pretty early on, and there were occasions when it was rather frustrating.

My Will/Energy Tank never had that issue, although admittedly she had Taunt and slotted several powers (including RttC) for taunt.  Actually, I generally felt like she had an easier time holding aggro than my SS/Stone Brute, but that may or may not have been due entirely to Rage crashes and mobility issues.  (Never did re-IO him out for speediness. )

[Kaiser Tarantula]

[faith.grins]

My Behemoth cannot tank Alerts unless someone on my team tosses me heals.  Period.  Alerts do not even guarantee that there's a Support player in the group at all, let alone someone who knows they'll be expected to heal.  That is a design flaw:  that there are pre-set Builds which are described as Tanks which do not function in that role unless they have a Healer backup... but cannot rely on ever actually having said Healer backup.  That's my problem.  I know how to block big blows, and I've even gotten to recognize some of the windups of things that I need to block even though they don't have POW! prompts.  I've taken the right talents and specializations to make me as crunchy as I can make myself.  I have level-appropriate gear.  I can hold aggro against one or two targets with no problem, three if none of them are ranged and combat hasn't gotten too frantic.  But if one of those targets is a Legendary villain, I will face-plant in under a minute without someone tossing heals my way, even if it's just someone's support drones.

That's the case in WoW, and I can accept that model.  I can also accept that there are some Correct Tank Builds and some Wrong Tank Builds, and I could even swallow that there are really only two or three Correct Tank Builds in all of CO, for all of its "openness."  But if you're going to make it like that, and then lock some players into one of five Tank Builds unless they pay $50 for a freeform slot or fork over $15 a month, all of them should be Correct Tank Builds.  Your argument seems to be either that they are all Wrong Tank Builds, or that CO is not designed for Tanks to be support-independent.  The former is unacceptable because three of the Tank Builds require cash to access, one way or another.  The latter is acceptable if and only if that is the paradigm the game explains to you.  For a couple of years, WoW fell down on that latter point, but since they introduced the LFG Dungeon tool, it's made clear that team content in that game expects a Tank, a Healer, and Three DPS.  If you want to try your hand at making a different kind of group to tackle the dungeon with, that's your prerogative, but the game isn't going to just drop you into the fire without someone wearing asbestos and someone with a fire hose.  Champions Online does not make that clear, and my experience with their Alert Team Up mechanic has been one that seems to imply that it's not the model they've adopted, at least not consciously.

I get that Freeforms are better than ATs.  I have no problem with that.  What I have a problem with is that nothing in the game explains to you that ATs listed as "Tanks" are not going to get the Tanking Job done without Support.  Nothing in the game even implies that.  I am not getting a consistent message from Champions Online Re:  the viability of my Behemoth as a tank.  And that is bad game design.

I get that the game didn't launch with Archetypes at all.  I played it briefly a few months after launch.  It didn't really capture my attention.  Now that it's the closest thing I can get to a "fix," I've come back to it on a limited basis.  My impression is that the whole F2P model they've adopted is poorly managed.    Basically, the way I see it, free players do not get a real sense of how the game was intended to work; they just get to sit in the copilot's chair while people around them play it.  And the view is very cool, don't get me wrong, but if the idea of Archetypes is to give free players (or people who want to invest a small initial amount) a chance to experience the game from one perspective, they have chosen a poor vantage point for the Tank perspective.  My experience as a Tank in CO has not been a positive one.  It's been about as bad as playing a Tankadin in Vanilla WoW.  In some ways it's been worse.  It hasn't really encouraged me to spend more money on the game, to be honest.

[Kaiser Tarantula]

My Behemoth cannot tank Alerts unless someone on my team tosses me heals.  Period.  Alerts do not even guarantee that there's a Support player in the group at all, let alone someone who knows they'll be expected to heal.

I feel for you man.  I know your pain.  I played a Behemoth AT, before deleting it around level 25 because it just was a terrible tank.  Defiance is NO GOOD unless it's backed up by a self-heal, damage shield, damage reduction, or some other form of mitigation, and the Behemoth just doesn't have one.  It's, honestly, one of the worst tank ATs for that very reason.  It's why I switched over to a Glacier AT for my tank and never looked back.

Behemoth is a really bad example of a tank, to be quite frank.  Any fight that requires you to tank more than 1 or 2 enemies at a time is going to leave you hurting, and Defiance in particular is slow-building.  Sure, once you're sitting on eight stacks you're about as tough as nails, but you actually have to get eight stacks running at once, which can be difficult.  You're also stuck with tons of powers that cause knockback, as well as Enrage which requires knocks to stack.  This means you're usually running around the battlefield like a chicken with your head cut off, unable to properly AoE your enemies because you're scattering them around.  Further you can't use crowd control to mitigate damage, because you have to take hits to build up Defiance, which is terrible in the absence of a self-heal (and Enrage's self-healing advantage is pitifully weak even in the best of conditions and scales with Presence which the Behemoth doesn't have much of; I don't even count it).

Basically, what I'm saying is that your perception of tanking in CO is being colored by a terrible AT.  And I know being silver doesn't give you a lot of options (I'm a silver player myself, and c'mon, only two tank ATs for silver players, but three ranged damagers?  What gives, Cryptic?), but, y'know this is how they get you to subscribe to Gold.  Or how they try to, anyway.  I personally wouldn't give my prospective customers outright disappointing builds like the Behemoth, telling them they have to subscribe to see a good one (when if they subscribe, they could freeform a build better than any I'm willing to offer ANYWAY.)

Short version, the Behemoth is terrible.  I don't know why they don't rework it, why it never performs as-advertised, but it doesn't.  It's a failure of game design on their part and I will freely state such to whoever is thinking of trying it.  It MIGHT pan out at high levels, but I don't feel like playing a character that has to wait until level 35 just to be capable at its advertised role.  It's the same reason I don't play The Mind (which is another AT that is suffering defined until you hit the level cap and get your last power.)

My advice is to try coming up with a character for a Glacier AT.  Try that out, and if you find you're still despising tanking in CO, then maybe it's just not a good game for you.  If you do like it, then consider subbing so that you can Freeform up a Might character that can stomp the daylights outta your enemies in the fashion you desire.

EDIT: Hey, if any Cryptic devs ever read this and want to rework the Behemoth, here's what I'd recommend to make it actually good.

Lv1: Clobber, Iron Lariat
Lv6: Defiance
Lv8: Conviction
Lv11: Iron Cyclone OR Roomsweeper
Lv14: Enrage
Lv17: Demolish
Lv21: Retaliation
Lv25: Aggressor
Lv30: Resurgence
Lv35: Havoc Stomp OR Thunderclap
Lv40: Shockwave

Iron Lariat gives you a means of pulling enemies toward you if you happen to knock them away, and neutralizes ranged enemies who you'd normally have to walk toward.  It also forces ranged enemies to fight you with their melee attacks, which are weaker and easier to survive.  Getting Conviction early gives you a self-heal to work with, and Resurgence is another one that's useful.  Iron Cyclone is one of the best Might AoEs for tanking purposes: with the advantage, everything that gets caught in it gets knocked TOWARD you with every tick you maintain it, proccing your Enrage and neatly gathering up a scattered group up enemies for further AoE abuse.

Havoc Stomp gives you a Tier 3 AoE prior to level 40.  When you have Iron Cyclone and Havoc Stomp, you can abuse enemies relentlessly with AoE knocks.  Iron Cyclone pulls them in, Havoc stomp sends them skyward, and you can repeat the combo until you run out of enemies, at which point you unleash a fully charged Demolish with 8 stacks of Enrage on any survivors.

If I could, I'd replace Defiance with either Invulnerability or Regeneration, but other ATs already use those two, and The Behemoth is the only AT that uses Defiance.

[faith.grins]

I feel for you man.  I know your pain.  I played a Behemoth AT, before deleting it around level 25 because it just was a terrible tank.  Defiance is NO GOOD unless it's backed up by a self-heal, damage shield, damage reduction, or some other form of mitigation, and the Behemoth just doesn't have one.  It's, honestly, one of the worst tank ATs for that very reason.  It's why I switched over to a Glacier AT for my tank and never looked back.

Behemoth is a really bad example of a tank, to be quite frank.  Any fight that requires you to tank more than 1 or 2 enemies at a time is going to leave you hurting, and Defiance in particular is slow-building.  Sure, once you're sitting on eight stacks you're about as tough as nails, but you actually have to get eight stacks running at once, which can be difficult.  You're also stuck with tons of powers that cause knockback, as well as Enrage which requires knocks to stack.  This means you're usually running around the battlefield like a chicken with your head cut off, unable to properly AoE your enemies because you're scattering them around.  Further you can't use crowd control to mitigate damage, because you have to take hits to build up Defiance, which is terrible in the absence of a self-heal (and Enrage's self-healing advantage is pitifully weak even in the best of conditions and scales with Presence which the Behemoth doesn't have much of; I don't even count it).

Basically, what I'm saying is that your perception of tanking in CO is being colored by a terrible AT.  And I know being silver doesn't give you a lot of options (I'm a silver player myself, and c'mon, only two tank ATs for silver players, but three ranged damagers?  What gives, Cryptic?), but, y'know this is how they get you to subscribe to Gold.  Or how they try to, anyway.  I personally wouldn't give my prospective customers outright disappointing builds like the Behemoth, telling them they have to subscribe to see a good one (when if they subscribe, they could freeform a build better than any I'm willing to offer ANYWAY.)

Short version, the Behemoth is terrible.  I don't know why they don't rework it, why it never performs as-advertised, but it doesn't.  It's a failure of game design on their part and I will freely state such to whoever is thinking of trying it.  It MIGHT pan out at high levels, but I don't feel like playing a character that has to wait until level 35 just to be capable at its advertised role.  It's the same reason I don't play The Mind (which is another AT that is suffering defined until you hit the level cap and get your last power.)

My advice is to try coming up with a character for a Glacier AT.  Try that out, and if you find you're still despising tanking in CO, then maybe it's just not a good game for you.  If you do like it, then consider subbing so that you can Freeform up a Might character that can stomp the daylights outta your enemies in the fashion you desire.

EDIT: Hey, if any Cryptic devs ever read this and want to rework the Behemoth, here's what I'd recommend to make it actually good.

Lv1: Clobber, Iron Lariat
Lv6: Defiance
Lv8: Conviction
Lv11: Iron Cyclone OR Roomsweeper
Lv14: Enrage
Lv17: Demolish
Lv21: Retaliation
Lv25: Aggressor
Lv30: Resurgence
Lv35: Havoc Stomp OR Thunderclap
Lv40: Shockwave

Iron Lariat gives you a means of pulling enemies toward you if you happen to knock them away, and neutralizes ranged enemies who you'd normally have to walk toward.  It also forces ranged enemies to fight you with their melee attacks, which are weaker and easier to survive.  Getting Conviction early gives you a self-heal to work with, and Resurgence is another one that's useful.  Iron Cyclone is one of the best Might AoEs for tanking purposes: with the advantage, everything that gets caught in it gets knocked TOWARD you with every tick you maintain it, proccing your Enrage and neatly gathering up a scattered group up enemies for further AoE abuse.

Havoc Stomp gives you a Tier 3 AoE prior to level 40.  When you have Iron Cyclone and Havoc Stomp, you can abuse enemies relentlessly with AoE knocks.  Iron Cyclone pulls them in, Havoc stomp sends them skyward, and you can repeat the combo until you run out of enemies, at which point you unleash a fully charged Demolish with 8 stacks of Enrage on any survivors.

If I could, I'd replace Defiance with either Invulnerability or Regeneration, but other ATs already use those two, and The Behemoth is the only AT that uses Defiance.

IIRC, Defiance stacks to 6, and diminishing returns on it start at 15% resist.  6 stacks of that is 90% resists.  If you buy Rank 3 of Defiance, you start combat at 45% resists.  Living at ~50% resist and scaling up to ~100% within the first 20 seconds of combat ain't a bad rap, that basically means you're going from taking 66.67% damage to 50%.  I know neither how Defense from gear scales, nor whether it multiplies with Resistance, or if they add their values together to become the divisor.  I can imagine that if they add together to become the big Damage Divisor, then Invuln blows Defiance out of the water for all but the biggest targets which you need to squeeze every last drop of mitigation out of your build.  If they multiply, I'd bet they actually come out pretty close at Full Stacks vs. Post Flat-Reduction.  But the point is, I don't know how this stuff interacts, and I can't find information on the official forums explaining it to me.  And the wiki is a freaking joke when it comes to this kind of stuff; there's no Red Tomax equivalent for CO, and their community is so much the poorer for it.

Which all goes back to my point of Bad Design - the way this stuff interacts is neither obvious nor intuitive, and the game does not explain itself very well in this fashion.  (I think the industry term relevant here is "Conveyance."  WoW has passably good conveyance.  City of Heroes had pretty good conveyance.  CO has Poor-to-Mediocre conveyance.)

Aaaaanyway... I think I may just need to step away from CO for a bit until I have some cash to throw at it.  See if the Freeform system has grown on me any since the... 2+ years ago I tried it.

[General Idiot]

Most of the other stuff in this thread is bang on but this in particular is flat wrong:

on timers similar to CoH's Build-Up (i.e., 10 seconds up, 90 second cooldown) with no way to reduce that cooldown by any major amount, and having only one slotted passive means you can't layer defenses (with the exception of Inertial Dampening Field, the only defensive Toggle in the entire game).

In both situations, you're ignoring gear. Your powers are only half the equation, in Champions. In the former case, getting gear with lots of Intelligence on it will provide a cooldown reduction - take it as a primary or secondary stat too for best results. Additionally, most primary and secondary Utility gear will come with some amount of cooldown reduction on it as well, with some having more as a result of what property it has. (See here for a full list of properties and which ones give what.) You can also slot Impact Prism mods into primary Utility gear that has a mod slot for additional cooldown reduction. As an example, my munitions character has all her active offense and defense powers on a 38 second cooldown - notably without stacking that to the exclusion of everything else.

In the latter situation, on all defense items (actually all gear period, but defense items have more) by default is some amount of defense, which provides a flat amount of resistance. The aforementioned munitions character has if I remember rightly 32% resistance to all damage from defense alone. Certain specialisation trees will give extra defense as well, usually as a 'you gain +x% defense from items' effect. Additionally, depending on the property the item has you can also get either dodge or avoidance on an item which will boost your chance to dodge and the amount of damage avoided when you do. Generally avoidance is preferred as there's diminishing returns on both and you can get dodge from slotting a mod (Gambler's Lucky Gem) into primary defense items with a mod slot. Again using the same character as an example, she has 70%/65% dodge/avoidance, about half of which is purely from gear. There's no basic stats that directly affect defense or dodge/avoidance, unlike intelligence with cooldown reduction. There are however several specialisations in the primary stat trees. A good half or more of them have one that'll make your secondary stats increase defense. Constitution has one that makes dexterity give dodge and one that makes constitution give defense. Dexterity has ones that'll make your dexterity give dodge and your secondary stats give avoidance.

So, yeah. Lots of options for all sorts of things, before your actual powers are even taken into account. For ATs your primary/secondary stats and specialisation trees are preset (Though which specific specialisations you take in those trees is up to you) so the options playing off primary stats' specialisation trees aren't available in all cases, but everything else is.

Also worth noting, for if you're having trouble. There aren't inspirations in this game, in the same sense as CoH. There are however Devices, which function similar to temporary powers in CoH. A vendor in Renaissance Center will sell you basic healing, shield and heal over time devices - he's to the left of the Powerhouse entrance if I remember rightly. You can also buy such devices from recognition vendors in various locations. I personally keep a stack of healing devices on me for emergencies, even though that character I keep mentioning has two self heals. If you lack self-heals (If freeform, why would you lack self-heals? If AT, you're forgiven.) then they're even more useful.

In a fight, also be on watch for yellow defense boosts which will give you increased damage resistance for a time, and green healing boosts which will, oddly enough, heal you. Doesn't happen often but they've saved my bacon occasionally by dropping at the right moment.


In the long run though - if you can spare the fifteen bucks a month, subscribe for access to freeform characters. Some of the ATs, especially the tank ones, are just terrible. And that one character I keep bringing up? Even having all that defense, she's a blaster.

Edit: Closed that URL tag, whole post isn't a link now. Derp.

[dwturducken]

I need to log in to see what my freeform is. I used someone's recommendation for a first defensive power then took personal forcefield at level 8 (he's a powered armor ranged). I'd have to log in to see what actual powers he has, but I'm cautiously satisfied. He doesn't die a lot, but Kevin Poe took two tries before I had the room cleared and could focus on him. That's pretty good for me.

I know that I ended up on Willpower as my defensive set on Tanks and Brutes and Regen on Scrappers and Stalkers, because that seemed to be more survivable at low levels for me. I only ever had one brute, one scrapper, and one stalker advance above 25, so I can't speak to how they performed above that. I tended to prefer Blappers and Corralkers.

I don't know about an aggro cap. We didn't exactly utilize small unit urban breach tactics, so the fights were generally pretty chaotic. I do know that player liked to set the difficulty and mob sizes each up one for teams of more than 4. And, this group, who were all players since the first or second year, was the only group I could team with who could really make this strategy work consistently. I joined them in about 07, and they already had it down to a routine. One guy had a fire and ice villain that, I believe, was a Dominator, who liked to accidentally set of Rain of Fire and draw the mobs back to the blasters, but I'll admit I wasn't exactly counting heads as they came at me.

[Kaiser Tarantula]

I need to log in to see what my freeform is. I used someone's recommendation for a first defensive power then took personal forcefield at level 8 (he's a powered armor ranged). I'd have to log in to see what actual powers he has, but I'm cautiously satisfied. He doesn't die a lot, but Kevin Poe took two tries before I had the room cleared and could focus on him. That's pretty good for me.

Kevin Poe is actually kind of a hard first Super Villain fight, to be totally honest.  Not only does he have a goon squad of minions that jump you the minute his cutscene starts, but Poe himself combines dual pistol attacks and the Darkness framework, with a nasty habit of using Breakaway Shot just as you close to melee range, only to bombard you with Two-Gun Mojo (the most damaging attack in his repetoire) or Lifedrain (block at all costs to avoid letting him heal off you) as soon as he lands.  While he's easy when you're fighting him with a full set of powers, when you've only got the first three or four powers in your progression, plus being outnumbered badly when the fight starts, the tables can turn on you very quickly.  The game reminds you "Get ready to block Kevin Poe's dangerous attack!" during your first fight against him, but it's not too helpful.  All of his attacks are dangerous to a squishy character, and you can't block them all or he'll whittle you down to nothing anyway.

Ranged attackers will find Kevin Poe a lot easier.  Not only can he not escape you via Breakaway Shot, but you can break his Lifedrain by backing up out of his reach (it has a very short range).  As a result, the only real dangerous attacks Kevin has is Two-Gun Mojo, which you can block.  It's not unusual to take two tries on him when solo - clear the goons out the first time, defeat Kevin for real on the second.

Personal Forcefield isn't bad.  It works like Regeneration in reverse.  The damage shield regenerates constantly, but it regenerates quicker if you block and slows down as you take hits.  As a result, you can turtle up behind a good strong Block power and let your personal forcefield recover while your powers are on cooldown.  Coupled with a block that deals damage to enemies (Electric Shield w/Electric Vengeance, Fire Shield, Ebon Void w/Voracious Darkness, Parry) you can soften up enemies even while blocking.

Of particular note is Ebon Void w/Voracious Darkness.  Not only can this shield reach a whopping 400% resist-all once it hits ten stacks, but it also heals you slightly and deals a small amount of damage when you take hits (maximum of once a second).  Since it deals Dimensional Damage, it will proc Spirit Reverberation on enemies that are afflicted with Fear.  If you drop Circle of Ebon Wrath on yourself, and then turtle up under Ebon Void, you'll enjoy Spirit Reveberation on everyone attacking you.  Fear has the nice side effect of reducing the damage enemies deal, which makes your turtling even more effective.

[dwturducken]

I'm still fairly new at this game. This was my first character to get to the Kevin Poe fight, in fact. I referred to the guide posted in one of the other threads (by you, I believe) for all my "gold" builds, but this one was a sort of RP choice. I suppose I could justify Regen as being nanobots or something, but I wasn't thinking that deeply into it.

My ultimate goal is to figure out how to make a character that doesn't have to block. Maybe if I made a Shield Tank/Scrapper it would seem like a better fit, but for a Tank to block seems to me to be a bit like the George Reeves Superman: "Bullets bounce off me, but don't throw your gun!"

[faith.grins]

Most of the other stuff in this thread is bang on but this in particular is flat wrong:
In both situations, you're ignoring gear. Your powers are only half the equation, in Champions. In the former case, getting gear with lots of Intelligence on it will provide a cooldown reduction - take it as a primary or secondary stat too for best results. Additionally, most primary and secondary Utility gear will come with some amount of cooldown reduction on it as well, with some having more as a result of what property it has. (See here for a full list of properties and which ones give what.) You can also slot Impact Prism mods into primary Utility gear that has a mod slot for additional cooldown reduction. As an example, my munitions character has all her active offense and defense powers on a 38 second cooldown - notably without stacking that to the exclusion of everything else.

In the latter situation, on all defense items (actually all gear period, but defense items have more) by default is some amount of defense, which provides a flat amount of resistance. The aforementioned munitions character has if I remember rightly 32% resistance to all damage from defense alone. Certain specialisation trees will give extra defense as well, usually as a 'you gain +x% defense from items' effect. Additionally, depending on the property the item has you can also get either dodge or avoidance on an item which will boost your chance to dodge and the amount of damage avoided when you do. Generally avoidance is preferred as there's diminishing returns on both and you can get dodge from slotting a mod (Gambler's Lucky Gem) into primary defense items with a mod slot. Again using the same character as an example, she has 70%/65% dodge/avoidance, about half of which is purely from gear. There's no basic stats that directly affect defense or dodge/avoidance, unlike intelligence with cooldown reduction. There are however several specialisations in the primary stat trees. A good half or more of them have one that'll make your secondary stats increase defense. Constitution has one that makes dexterity give dodge and one that makes constitution give defense. Dexterity has ones that'll make your dexterity give dodge and your secondary stats give avoidance.

So, yeah. Lots of options for all sorts of things, before your actual powers are even taken into account. For ATs your primary/secondary stats and specialisation trees are preset (Though which specific specialisations you take in those trees is up to you) so the options playing off primary stats' specialisation trees aren't available in all cases, but everything else is.

Also worth noting, for if you're having trouble. There aren't inspirations in this game, in the same sense as CoH. There are however Devices, which function similar to temporary powers in CoH. A vendor in Renaissance Center will sell you basic healing, shield and heal over time devices - he's to the left of the Powerhouse entrance if I remember rightly. You can also buy such devices from recognition vendors in various locations. I personally keep a stack of healing devices on me for emergencies, even though that character I keep mentioning has two self heals. If you lack self-heals (If freeform, why would you lack self-heals? If AT, you're forgiven.) then they're even more useful.

In a fight, also be on watch for yellow defense boosts which will give you increased damage resistance for a time, and green healing boosts which will, oddly enough, heal you. Doesn't happen often but they've saved my bacon occasionally by dropping at the right moment.


In the long run though - if you can spare the fifteen bucks a month, subscribe for access to freeform characters. Some of the ATs, especially the tank ones, are just terrible. And that one character I keep bringing up? Even having all that defense, she's a blaster.

Mein Gott, man, close that url tag!  It burns us, precious, it burnses!

[General Idiot]

Yeah, that's what I get for not previewing before posting it. Sorry about that, it's fixed now.

[Thunder Glove]

I know Intelligence provides a cooldown reduction, but that's why I said "major".  Even reducing 90 seconds to 40, while pretty major in itself, means the clickie is still up only 1/3 of the time at best.

Still, yeah, I did forget about equipment.  Defense buffs on equipment are something that anyone can get. (I'm not sure of the exact radio of Defense to damage resistance, but you can see how much damage resistance you get from your total Defense in your Character screen anyway)

On the other side of the coin, though, since everyone regardless of build or Role can get Defense buffs via their equipment, the game seems to be balanced around already having such gear, so you still need defensive powers to push past that.  (And I still find that my most effective characters are the ones who focus primarily on offense, particularly AoEs, rather than defense.  The opponent being dead and thus unable to attack you seems to be the best defense of all)

[Kaiser Tarantula]

I know Intelligence provides a cooldown reduction, but that's why I said "major".  Even reducing 90 seconds to 40, while pretty major in itself, means the clickie is still up only 1/3 of the time at best.

There's a power in Gadgeteering you might like.  Nanobot Swarm is a clicky buff that can chop up to 24 seconds off the cooldown time of any powers that are currently in the process of cooldown.  The buff itself has a 2 minute cooldown on its own, but 24 seconds is a lot of saved time for most powers that have a cooldown.  With the advantage, it only removes 20 seconds, but also provides you with a strong self-HoT for a little over a quarter of a minute.

Intelligence increases energy efficiency and cooldown speed on powers, as you know, but did you know that Primary and Secondary utility gear can sometimes directly feature cooldown speed bonuses?  Combined with Nanobot Swarm and high intelligence, you can cut a lot of long cooldown times down to more manageable levels.

[General Idiot]

(I'm not sure of the exact radio of Defense to damage resistance, but you can see how much damage resistance you get from your total Defense in your Character screen anyway)

It's not linear, as far as I know. The more you have, the less each point gives you. Same as almost everything else.

Also, 90 seconds to 40 is pretty good. Aim or Build Up with three recharge enhancements goes from 90 to about 45. IOs and/or hasten will take it down to 30ish. Considering these things are on a shared cooldown anyway, 38 seconds recharge is enough for me to have one or the other up pretty much constantly if I time them right. Also worth noting, ranking up active offense powers makes them last longer in addition to giving a stronger buff. 12 seconds of +42% damage at rank 1, 15 seconds and +50% at rank 2 and 18 seconds and +60% at rank 3. I'm not sure if the active defense powers are the same, will have to have a look.